X-MEN #1 (1963)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
I will mostly focus on Magneto’s first appearance for the villain origins retrospective, but I have to comment that the cover doesn’t make that much sense.
Like, what is Beast swinging from? How is Angel going to shoot that bazooka while flying? And how did Iceman manage to both miss Magneto and hit his back?
Cyclops sucking up to Professor X in his first scene is just perfect. Angel, not so much.
The training sessions of the Danger Room are quite intense…
…unless you’re Iceman.
After more pages of training, Marvel Girl is introduced to the rest of the team she’s joining.
When it comes to Marvel stories, one of the advantages of Marvel Unlimited is the very high quality image. However, sometimes it lets you skip some funny moments because they’ve gone back and corrected bizarre errors.
Case in point: modern reprints show Marvel Girl talk about her telekinesis…
…but if you go back to the original, you find out that some terms were not universally accepted yet.
Other parts that have not aged well are harder to fix, though.
But enough with the introductions. It’s time to meet the winner of Best Supervillain Helmet for the past 60 years: Magneto.
Honestly he should refer to himself as the Miraculous Magneto all the time.
This is a very big deal. Whereas Doctor Polaris was wasting his magnetic abilities on petty crimes, Magneto debuts by sabotaging ICBMs at the height of the Cold War!!!
Is it really that secret if it’s immediately public knowledge?
Also the military seems to be staffed almost exclusively by complete idiots.
Obviously I’m more of a Doctor Doom fan (shocking) but it’s impossible to deny that Magneto is, in fact, really freaking cool.
His powers even make him immune to having his entire face hidden by speech balloons.
Magneto taking over a military base naturally makes the news, and so the X-Men decide to intervene. Traveling by a Rolls Royce (!!!!) and then a thought-controlled private jet (WTF!?).
Magneto is protecting the base with a magnetic force field that seems completely indestructible, until Cyclops really lets loose his optic blasts.
The attack must’ve affected Magneto more than he lets on, because instead of using his powers to throw missiles at the X-Men he just fires them.
The missiles are not as impressive as he makes them sound.
Weird to consider he’s doing the same trick of Doctor Polaris. But if you’re a magnetism-based supervillain, I guess turning people into magnets is a must.
Sending a barrel of burning rocket fuel is a new one, though.
See? Told you that “Miraculous Magneto” should be used more often!
You can definitely tell this is a very early Magneto. If this was later in his career, he’d use magnetism to repel fire (I’m not kidding, I’ve seen him do it).
The X-Men turn out to have survived his attack (Cyclops created a tunnel and Iceman a super-strong igloo), and Magneto just… leaves the scene.
I’m just saying, the Fantastic Four needed more than 15 minutes to defeat Doctor Doom in HIS first appearance!
If you’re only familiar with more modern versions of the X-Men, it’s always amazing to see how comfortable they were around the authorities in their earliest stories.
Or maybe I should say uncanny.
Historical significance: 10/10
Not just introducing the X-Men, but the very concept of mutants as well. Which reportedly Stan Lee invented so that he wouldn’t have to think too much about an origin story for how each character got powers. In fact the series was supposed to be called “Mutants”, but Martin Goodman didn’t think kids would understand the term.
(mind you, it’s entirely possible the story is apocryphal)
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
On the Marvel scale.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
Magneto is great. The X-Men, on the other hand… Professor X is constantly holding their hands and barking telepathic orders, their personalities come of as rather generic, and there’s barely any mention of the heavier social themes that will eventually make the X-Men famous. Out of all the creations of the Lee & Kirby duo, I’ve always thought that they gave the least attention to the X-Men.
How close is this to the modern character? 4/10
Silver Age Magneto can be EXTREMELY jarring to modern readers. Despite some minor lip service here and there to mutants being persecuted, he’s a straight up world-conquering supervillain with an ego the size of a planet and the power to match it.
The look is definitely there: it’s a masterpiece of costume design, and no matter how many variations Marvel tries, Magneto’s original look is unbeatable.
While he was DEFINITELY overused in the Lee & Kirby run, slowly turning Magneto into a sympathetic character made him less interesting to me. And the attempts to justify his most horrific actions have gone too far over the years: yes he’s a damn cool villain, and yes there’s nothing wrong with a good redemption arc, but turning him into a constant ally of the X-Men is too much.
That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always preferred Doctor Doom: you can still consider him a badass character with a complex personality without the writers constantly insisting he’s not a horrible human being.